Application of Coherently Radiating Periodic Structures for Feeding Subarrays in Limited-Scan Arrays

Abstract

This paper presents a new design technique to improve the reduction of phase shifters using subarrays and CORPS (coherently radiating periodic structures) technology. The CORPS network generates the values of cophasal excitation with reduced input ports. These values feed an optimal sub-arrays structure. Furthermore, fixed and variable amplifiers allow a low SLL (side lobe level) by using a raised cosine amplitude distribution along sub-arrays inputs. The theoretical model of CORPS-Subarrays, numerical and experimental results of several design cases are presented. The proposed design achieves a ±14° scanning range with a higher reduction of phase shifters than other techniques presented previously in the state of art. This paper illustrates, as a contribution, the complete antenna system based on the fabrication of a prototype and experimental results to analyze the reduction capacity of phase shifters and scanning possibilities of the proposed methodology in antenna arrays. The experimental results of the BFN (beam-forming networks) prototype at 6 GHz for 11 antenna elements and 3 phase shifters are provided. The proposed design achieves a reduction of 72% of phased shifters with ±14° beam scanning and -15 dB of SLL.INDEX TERMS Phased Array, beam-scanning, subarrays, CORPS, phase shifters I.